East Kent Light Railway

However in most of the collieries there were problems with managing water while sinking the shafts, and shortly after Tilmanstone reached full production in 1914, World War One resulted in changed priorities.

Woodnesborough colliery had its surface buildings built but never got as far as sinking shafts before war broke out, and work never resumed, though the site was taken over by Hammill Brick Company in 1927 and so the branch connecting it to the East Kent Light Railway was used for this purpose.

[10] Hopes of completing extensions were raised when the Southern Railway invested £44,000 in discounted shares (£220,000 at par) in 1926,[11] but dashed when it lost interest (although remaining friendly and having directors on the Board).

Richborough Port was a failure, and the EKLR became a truly rural railway with a heavy coal flow for a few miles only at one end between the working colliery at Tilmanstone and the SECR main line at Shepherdswell.

On 8 September 1940 three "super heavy batteries of artillery" entered the railway, with 0-6-0 tender engines hauling 82 ton 9.2 inch rail-mounted guns.

Rail-guns were deployed at many locations in the South of england, and their purpose was to bombard any German invasion forces - and to strike occupied British airfields.

In the first live firing at Sheperdswell considerable damage occurred to windows, roofs and doors of adjacent buildings due to the blast wave.

Coaching stock in Sheperdswell station 100 yards away had its windows damaged, and on future occasions was moved out of harms way, and all staff ordered out of the rail sheds and workshops.

These spurs were equipped with anchorages for securing the gun carriages via multiple one inch cables, as the recoil from firing live shells was substantial.

During the war the former Hammill brickworks site and equipment was adapted for drying damp grain, and so the rail spur was used to deliver 100 tons of coal a week to the dryers - the opposite direction to the original planned use.

After an extended period of increasing decrepitude, the final passenger service of two trains each way on weekdays (down from three) ran on 30 October 1948 following the nationalisation of British Railways.

In mid-October 1986 the miners voted to accept the closure of the Tilmanstone coal mine, and the disused rail line to the pit was officially closed on 24 October 1986.

There was a gravel pit (now a lake) and a quay on the Long Reach of the River Stour, used during the construction of the Admiralty Harbour at Dover by S. Pearson & Sons Co.

However, before WW1 Dover was intended to be the harbour of refuge for the Royal Navy's Channel Fleet, and so it was apparently feared that there would be little room left for coal ships.

Unfortunately, Krupp in Germany were already making steel cannon which could fire across the Channel by 1905, which ruled out any Royal Navy presence at Dover and made Richborough Port commercially rather pointless from the beginning.

It then ran down the east side of the road, crossed the Stonar Cut and split in two at the Red Lion pub, about where the entrance to the recycling plant now is.

However, Lawson-Finch's book[18] gives documentary evidence showing construction on the line and bridges continuing until the first official goods traffic to Richborough Port in 1929.

Pearson & Dorman Long wanted to build a steelworks at Richborough Port, with new towns to house the workers at Woodnesborough and Ash and using coal from its colliery at Betteshanger.

A main line link for coal traffic was actually authorised for Dover Eastern Harbour via a tunnel under the castle in 1933, just about the time when it was finally realized that the Kent coalfield was a commercial failure.

[22] Before the Second World War, only certain buildings were being used for colliery machine maintenance and the port railway network had been, in effect, abandoned before being inherited by the National Coal Board in 1948.

There was initially a branch from Eythorne to Tilmanstone Colliery, which was then extended to re-join the main line north of Elvington at some stage (apparently illicitly, as the extension is not listed as authorised).

This grossly unsatisfactory arrangement (especially for the carpenter in winter) was replaced by a concrete covered reservoir in the woods, supplied from a well by means of a diesel pump and which fed two standpipes by gravity.

[39] It charged a fixed rate per ton for taking loaded coal wagons from Tilmanstone Colliery to Shepherdswell (no further) for switching onto the main line and for returning empties.

Since the colliery possessed no locomotives, it also performed necessary shunting duties at the mine, including taking coal from the screens to the power station that ran the electric drainage pumps.

The siding at Poison Cross amounted to Eastry's goods yard, so main line train engines ventured this far to handle vehicles if necessary (the short distance was a separate block section).

Alarmingly, towards the end main line trains could be left waiting, even if they had passengers, for the engines to run as far as Richborough Castle and back if need be.

[40] Since the passenger coach doubled up as the brakevan, the published assertions that it was left at Sandwich Road (while the rest of the train went on) need confirmation (this statement may have been for official ears).

The Richborough Port branch had a low one over the Goshall Stream north of Sandwich Road station, and the famous high-level pair over the SECR and the river.

These were the level crossing listed with speed restrictions and requiring the whistle:[47] "Shepherds Well" (on Eythorne Road, now part of the preserved line and gated).

Spurs: A ghost of the proposed Deal line survived as a property boundary on the west side of Sandwich Road in Eythorne, at "The Outback", but has been lost through development.